VMware:

Accelerating VMware with Tegile Intelligent Flash Arrays

As you move more workloads to a virtualized environment, chances are your legacy storage system is struggling to keep up. Each one of your virtual machines (VMs) is sending I/O streams to the hypervisor for processing. As you deploy more VMs, this creates highly random I/O—also known as the "I/O Blender" effect— which can lead to high latency and unpredictable performance.

Tegile Intelligent Flash Arrays effectively manage random I/O streams to deliver consistently high performance at one-third the cost per gigabyte of traditional storage arrays. Each array includes a comprehensive set of data management capabilities and can seamlessly support different storage media (high-performance flash, dense flash, and hard disks) under a single storage operating system. Dial up or down the amount of flash storage to meet your performance needs. Get the lightning-fast performance of flash with the economics of disk.

Deliver Consistently High Performance

Tegile arrays are available in both all flash and hybrid configurations. Go with all flash for virtualization workloads that require sustained low latency and very high IOPS. For a balance of performance and economics, choose a hybrid array. Add capacity with additional storage when needed.

All Tegile arrays are powered by IntelliFlash™—regardless of their configuration. This proprietary software architecture employs several techniques to intelligently manage different storage media and neutralize the "I/O Blender" effect.

IntelliFlash uses the arrays' high-speed storage layers (DRAM and flash) as a high-performance cache. Data is organized and coalesced prior to landing on the capacity storage layer, turning random I/Os into sequential I/Os. Inline deduplication then acts as a performance multiplier, freeing up space in the cache for even faster reads and writes.

Tegile arrays also automatically separate metadata from data. The metadata is then organized, aggregated, and stored on the high-performance storage. This stands in stark contrast to traditional storage solutions, which interleave application data with metadata in one storage pool.

Moreover, Tegile arrays take advantage of vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which minimize I/O on the hypervisor and storage network by offloading storage operations like cloning and snapshots to the array. This means operations complete much faster and with reduced CPU overhead on the host.

Drive Down Storage Costs

Tegile arrays are engineered for storage efficiency, allowing you to dramatically cut down your storage acquisition and operational costs.

Allow your VMs to run with just the storage they need. Thinprovisioned LUNs automatically allocate physical storage as data is being written. Any space that's been allocated but hasn't been consumed remains available for other VMs and applications.

Tegile arrays also use inline compression and deduplication, which can shrink the storage footprint up to 90% in VMware environments. Data blocks are compressed and redundant blocks are removed before they are written to disk. In a virtual environment, redundant OS images can be reduced to a single instance and stored in flash.

Consolidate Workloads on a Single Array

Get an even greater return on your investment by consolidating workloads. Tegile arrays support both block-level (iSCSI and Fibre Channel) and file-level (CIFS and NFS) protocols, enabling you to deploy VMs, virtual desktops, databases, and user data on a single array.

Choose between NFS and VMFS Datastores

There are two main approaches to deploying a VMware-based datastore in a virtual environment: file-based NFS and block-based VMFS (virtual machine file system). Each has its merits. With Tegile arrays, you have the flexibility to deploy VMs using both VMFS (iSCSI and FC) and NFS datastores—whichever meets your needs and preferences.

Virtualization-Aware Storage for Easy Administration

Legacy storage systems leave you "flying blind" when it comes to understanding the storage resources used by your virtual infrastructure. Tegile arrays are virtualization-aware, giving you greater visibility into what storage resources are used by each VM. Quickly and easily correlate VM and storage performance characteristics. For example, you can see which VMs are demanding the most IOPS. You can also track deduplication and compression rates on a per-VM basis. Armed with these insights, you can quickly identify and resolve any performance-related issues that may arise, accurately forecast long-term capacity requirements, and ensure the long-term health of your virtual environment.

What's more, with Tegile's vCenter plug-in you can provision datastores, manage snapshots and restores, and monitor I/O status, space usage and latency for all of your Tegile arrays from within the vCenter console. You can also script and automate data protection tasks via Tegile's programmable RESTful APIs.

Ensure the Availability and Protection of End User Data

End users expect their applications and data to be available 24x7. When deploying VMware on Tegile arrays, you'll benefit from the resilience, end-to-end data integrity, and high-availability features provided by the IntelliFlash architecture.

All Tegile arrays include space-efficient snapshots and remote replication capabilities. Integration with VMware and VSS enables VM-consistent snapshots for VM images and application-consistent snapshots for application data. Instantaneous thin snapshots create space-efficient, point-in-time copies of data that can be replicated and instantaneously restored.

Additionally, Tegile arrays are fully redundant with no single point of failure. All media (SSDs and HDDs) in Tegile arrays are dual-ported and accessible through a pair of highly available, redundant controllers. The controllers are configured in an active/active manner and can be used simultaneously for data access.

VMware Horizon View:

Accelerate VMware Horizon View with Tegile Intelligent Flash Arrays

VDI has the potential to greatly simplify desktop management and give end users unprecedented flexibility. However, as you scale from hundreds to thousands of users, it can be difficult to continue to deliver a rich desktop experience without hitting the storage I/O wall or seeing your storage costs spiral out of control.

Think AND, not OR when it comes to the storage for your VMware Horizon View implementation. Tegile Intelligent Flash Arrays deliver the fastest possible response times while enabling you to significantly reduce storage costs. You will have the perfect platform to scale your VMware Horizon View implementation from hundreds to thousands of users and achieve fastest return on your storage investment.

Deliver consistently high performance as you scale

Maximize density and drive down the cost per virtual desktop

Simplify deployment and management with vCenter integration

Host virtual desktops and user data on a single array

Ensure virtual desktops are available 24x7 and user data is protected

Deliver Consistently High Performance

It can be a challenge to deliver consistent performance when thousands of desktops are booting up and logging in at once. You need a storage solution that can ride out the storm.

With a massive number of IOPS at its disposal, a Tegile array can easily handle boot storms and make login events an order of magnitude faster. This is accomplished using data reduction and metadata acceleration techniques provided by Tegile's IntelliFlash software architecture.

Inline deduplication acts as a performance multiplier, freeing up space in the cache for faster reads and writes. Virtual desktop images, applications and user files can be deduplicated and stored on flash.

Tegile arrays also automatically separate metadata from data. The metadata is then organized, aggregated, and stored on flash. This stands in stark contrast to traditional storage solutions, which co-mingle application data with metadata into one storage pool.

Moreover, Tegile arrays take advantage of vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which minimize I/O on the storage network by offloading storage operations like cloning and snapshots to the array. This means operations complete much faster and with reduced CPU overhead on the host.

Drive Down Your Storage Cost Virtual Desktop

Tegile arrays are engineered for storage efficiency, allowing you to dramatically cut down your storage acquisition and operational costs. Most desktop users only use a fraction of their total storage capacity. Tegile arrays offer thin provisioning so you can maximize storage capacity. Thin-provisioned LUNs automatically allocate physical storage as data is being written. Any space that's been allocated but hasn't been consumed remains available for other virtual desktops and applications.

Tegile arrays also use inline compression and deduplication, which can shrink the storage footprint up to 90% in VDI environments. Redundant OS images are reduced to a single instance and stored in flash. Hundreds or thousands of persistent VDI instances can be shrunk down to one single boot image.

Host Virtual Desktops and Data on a Single Array

Consolidate virtual desktop images, applications, and user data on a single array. Tegile arrays support both NAS and SAN protocols. Virtual desktop images can be deployed using NFS, iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocols, while user data can be hosted on the same array and accessed via CIFS for Windows desktops and NFS for Linux desktops.

You can also consolidate other workloads, such as virtual servers and databases, on a Tegile array for an even greater return on your investment.

Simplify Deployment & Management

Create and deploy hundreds of virtual desktops in minutes, not hours, and dramatically cut down the time required for doing regular VDI maintenance tasks. Tegile includes a VMware vCenter plug-in, enabling you to provision datastores, manage snapshots and restores, and monitor I/O status, space usage and latency for all of your Tegile arrays from either vCenter's Web or desktop client. You can also script and automate data protection tasks via Tegile's programmable RESTful APIs.

Ensure the Availability and Protection of End User Data

End users expect their virtual desktops and data to be available 24x7. When deploying VMware Horizon View on Tegile arrays, you'll benefit from the resilience, end-to-end data integrity, and high-availability features provided by the IntelliFlash architecture.

Oracle:

Running Oracle on Tegile Intelligent Flash Storage Arrays

Your business depends on Oracle databases for online transaction processing (OLTP), decision support, data warehousing, and real-time analytics. It's essential that you deliver consistent performance and high levels of availablity. But that can be difficult without the right storage infrastructure. As a result, revenue and productivity can suffer.

Tegile offers a comprehensive portfolio of hybrid and all-flash storage solutions that deliver sustained performance and resiliency for your Oracle databases, while lowering your storage infrastructure costs. Each array includes a comprehensive set of data management capabilities and can seamlessly support different storage media (high-performance flash, dense flash, and hard disks) under a single storage operating system. Dial up or down the amount of flash storage to meet your performance needs. Get the lightning-fast performance of flash with the economics of disk.

Reduce Oracle database transaction wait times to sub-milliseconds

Achieve up to 75% reduction in your storage footprint

Run applications and manage files on a single array

Take application-consistent snapshots and replicate them for disaster recovery

Dramatically Improve Database Response Times

Tegile Intelligent Flash Storage Arrays are able to reduce Oracle database transaction wait times to sub-milliseconds with IntelliFlash. Available across the entire line of Tegile's storage arrays, IntelliFlash is a flash-optimized software architecture that seamlessly integrates multiple grades of storage media to deliver high throughput and low latency.

IntelliFlash achieves this by automatically separating the metadata from the application data. The metadata is then organized, aggregated and placed on high-performance, low-latency storage layers (DRAM and flash) for the fastest possible response times. This stands in stark contrast to traditional storage solutions, which intermingle application data with metadata into one storage pool.

IntelliFlash also uses intelligent caching algorithms to place the most frequently accessed application data on DRAM and flash. These caching algorithms are optimized for various I/O patterns and seamlessly adapt to differing media latencies across multiple levels of cache.

Additionally, you can supercharge performance of your Oracle databases by isolating redo logs, indexes, and temporary ta􀃆lespaces in an all-flash storage pool.

Dense all-flash arrays for sustained low latency

48TB of all-flash in 2 rack units

336TB in 10 rack units

Sub-millisecond latency

High performance & high capacity hybrid arrays for most Oracle DB workloads

Pin redo logs & temp tables in all flash storage pool

Run rest of the DB in hybrid storage pool

Balance of performance, capacity and cost

Reduce Your Storage Footprint

Achieve 2X - 5X reduction in database size and up to 10X reduction in storage for your backups.

Inline compression and deduplication capabilities dramatically reduce the overall storage footprint of your Oracle databases while helping to improve performance. Data blocks are compressed and redundant data blocks are removed before they are written to disk. You can choose the compression rate and turn on/off deduplication at the LUN/file share level or at the project level to strike the perfect balance between speed and capacity.

Backup copies also benefit from these data reduction techniques, allowing you to maintain more recovery points on your Tegile array without taking up storage space.

Inline compression and deduplication also help to improve performance by freeing up cache space in the high-performance, low-latency storage layers (DRAM and flash) for faster reads and writes. The deduplication reference table comfortably resides in dedicated SDDs for the fastest possible processing.

And since this all occurs inline. It is transparent to the requesting application. Data will appear to the requestor as if it were in its original state (uncompressed and hydrated).

In-line compression

Reduce DB Storage consumption by >30%

Block-level compression

Performance multiplier

Turn on/off at LUN/share level

In-line de-duplication

Reduce space consumption for online backup images by >90%

Block level de-duplication

Turn on/off at LUN File-share level

De-dupe across SSD & HDD

Consolidate Your Workloads

It organizations often deploy multiple storage arrays to fit the protocol needs and workload characteristics of specific databases. Tegile arrays natively support both block and file protocols, enabling you to run applications and manage files on a single array. Supported block protocols include iSCSI and Fibre Channel. You can configure different block sizes for different databases or even for different LUNs within the same database, which is often considered a key requirement for Oracle DBAs. File protocols include NFS, CIFS and SMB 3.0. You can even use Oracle Direct NFS (dNFS) by exporting NFS V3 and V4 shares.

All protocols can be used simultaneously over a variety of storage ports. And since the IntelliFlash architecture is extensible, you can easily add other protocols in the future.

Ensure the Availability and Protection of Your Business-Critical Data

Your business-critical data must be protected and available 24 x 7. When deploying Oracle databases on Tegile arrays, you'll benefit from the resilience, end-to-end data integrity, and high-availability features provided by the IntelliFlash architecture.

All media (flash and hard disks) in Tegile arrays are dual-ported and accessible through a pair of highly available, redundant controllers. The controllers are configured in an active/active manner and can be used simultaneously for data access. And capacity expansion, system upgrades, media swaps are fully non-disruptive with zero downtime - all with minimal performance impact.

Tegile arrays also offer built-in data protection capabilities. Using IntelliFlash snapshot technology, you can take instantaneous, application-consistent snapshots of your production or test-development databases. The snapshots are space-efficient and incur to no performance overhead, allowing you take as many as you need. For disaster recovery, you can replicate snapshots to a remote site. Restoring a database is nearly instantaneous from either a local or remote snapshot.

Accelerate Deployment of Oracle-based Applications

Development, test, and quality assurance (QA) teams often need copies of production databases for a variety of different tasks. And of course doing the work agaist a live production database is not recommended. In these situations, it's necassary to make a copy of the database, but that is often cost prohibitive and can result in significant performance overhead while the clone exists.

Tegile arrays allow multiple read/write clones to exist without a performance hit. This allows you to accelerate the development, test and QA timeframes and get the next version of the Oracle application online that much faster.

Scale Performance and/or Capacity as Needed

Tegile offers both all-flash and hybrid arrays, all of which use the same operating system and associated features. This allows consolidation to a single platform for both the performance- or capacity-centric databases.

Expansion shelves can be added which can contain all flash, or a mix of hard disk and flash drives. As your database storage capacity grows you can add the most economical type of media while maintaining your performance levels. Competing solutions often require all flash, all the time or simply try to use flash drives in legacy operating systems built for spinning media.

Microsoft SQL Server:

Accelerating SQL Server on Tegile Intelligent Flash Storage Arrays

Your business depens on Micosoft SQL Server databases for data warehousing analytics and online transaction (OLTP) workloads. It's essential that you deliver consistently high levels of performance and availability. But that can be difficult without the right storage infrastructure. As a result, revenue and productivity can suffer.

Tegile offers a comprehensive protfolio of hybrid and all-flash storage solutions that deliver high I/O per second (IOPS) and sustained low latency at a price that fits most budgets. Each array includes a comprehensive set of data protection and management capabilities and can seamlessly support different storage media (high-performance flash, dense flash and hard disks) under a single storage operating system. Dail up or down the amount of flash storage to meet your performance needs. Get the lightning-fast performance of flash with the economics of disk.

Dramatically Improve Database Response Times

Tegile Intelligent Flash Storage Arrays are able to reduce SQL Server database transaction wait times to sub-milliseconds with IntelliFlash™. Available across the entire line of Tegile storage arrays, IntelliFlash is a flash-optimized software architecture that seamlessly integrates multiple grades of storage media to deliver optimal performance and capacity.

IntelliFlash achieves this by automatically separating metadata from data. The metadata is then organized aggregated and placed on high-performance, low-latency storage layers (DRAM and flash) for the fastest possible response times. This stands in stark contrast to traditional storage solutions, which intermingle data with metadata into one storage pool. IntelliFlash also uses intelligent caching algorithms to place the most frequently accessed application data on DRAM and flash. These caching algorithms are optimized for various I/O patterns and seamlessly adapt to differing media latencies across multiple levels of cache.

Additionally, you can supercharge performance of your SQL Server databases by pinning tempdb and log files to an all-flash storage pool.

Dense all-flash arrays for sustained low latency

48TB of all-flash in 2 rack units

336TB in 10 rack units

Sub-millisecond latency

High performance & high capacity hybrid arrays for most SQL server workloads

Pin redo logs & temp tables in all flash storage pool

Run rest of the DB in hybrid storage pool

Balance of performance, capacity and cost

Reduce Your Storage Footprint

Inline compression and deduplication capabilities dramatically reduce the overall storage footprint of your SQL Server databases while helping to improve performance. Data blocks are compressed and redundant data blocks are removed before they are written to disk. You can choose the compression rate and turn on/off deduptlication at the LUN/ file share level or at the protect level to strike the perfect balance between speed and capacity.

These data reduction techniques also act as a performance multiplier, freeing up space in the high-performance, low-latency storage layers (DRAM and flash) for faster reads and writes. The deduplication reference table comfortably resides in dedicated SSDs for the fastest possible processing.

And since this all occurs as the data is ingested, it is transparent to the requesting application. Data will appear to the requestor as if it were in its original state (uncompressed and hydrated).

In-line compression

Reduce DB Storage consumption by >30%

Block-level compression

Performance multiplier

Turn on/off at LUN/share level

In-line de-duplication

Reduce space consumption for online backup images by >90%

Block level de-duplication

Turn on/off at LUN File-share level

De-dupe across SSD & HDD

Maximize Storage Efficiency

Increase storage utilization rates by not over-allocating capacity. Thin provisioning on Tegile arrays automatically allocates physical storage as data is being written. Any space that's been allocated but hasn't been consumed remains available for other applications.

Consolidate Workloads with Multi-Protocol Support

IT organizations often deploy multipe storage arrays to fit the protocol needs and workload characteristics of specific databases. Tegile arrays natively support both block and file protocols, enabling you to host SQL Server databases and your other workloads on a single array. Supported file protocols include NFS, CIFS and SMB 3.0. Block protocols include iSCSI and Fibre Channel. All protocols can be used simultaneously over a variety of storage ports.

As you provision storage, you can choose the granularity of the block size and other parameters at the database or individual LUN level. You can also ask the array to do it for your within the user interfaces. Tegile arrays include application-aware provisioning. Simply select the use-case (database, server virtualization, or VDI), and the array will instantly optimize the volume's configuration (block size, compression algorithm, deduplication settings, etc.)

Ensure the Availability and Protection of Your Business-Critical Data

Prevent data loss due to corruption and ensure your data is available 24x7. When deploying SQL Server databases on Tegile arrays, you'll benefit from the resilience, end-to-end data integrity, and high-availability features provided by the IntelliFlash architecture.

With Tegile arrays, there is no single point of failure. All media are dual-ported and accessible through a pair of highly available, redundant controllers. The controllers are configured in an active/active mode and can be configured for simultaneous data access. Capacity expansion, system upgrades, media swaps are performed with zero downtime and minimal performance impact.

Tegile arrays also offer built-in data protection capabilities with a Microsoft VSS (Volume Shadow-copy Services) Provider that ensures point-in-time, application-consistent snapshots for your SQL Server databases. The snapshots are space-efficient and incur to no performance overhead, allowing you take as many as you need. For disaster recovery, you can replicate snapshots to a remote site. Restoring a database is nearly instantaneous from either a local or remote snapshot.

Accelerate Deployment of SQL Server-based Applications

Development, test, and quality assurance (QA) teams often need copies of production databases for a variety of different tasks. And of course doing the work agaist a live production database is not recommended. In these situations, it's necassary to create clones of the production database. However, that can consume a lot of storage space.

Get new applications into production faster while significantly reducing space requirements. Tegile arrays allow you to create multiple read/write clones of the production databases without taking up additional space or incurring a performance hit. Like Tegile snapshots, these thin clones only consume space for the changed blocks.

Scale Performance and/or Capacity as Needed

As your database storage capacity grows, you can add the most economical type of media while maintaining your performance levels. Add expansion shelves with all flash or a combination of flash and hard disk drives. Competing solutions often require all flash-all the time. Or they simply try to use flash drives in a legacy system built for spinning media.